With a smile, he nodded and moved his hands to cup and shape the curve of her breasts. Her moan of approval vibrated through him, and he gave himself up to the warmth of her hands on his body. Under his thumbs, her nipples hardened, and he drew his tongue over one in a rough lap, then blew on the damp skin. The bite of her nails on his back rewarded him. He lingered, lavishing kisses and caresses on her breasts until she writhed beneath him, wrapping both legs around his thigh to rub against him.
He massaged his palm over her hip, down her thigh and behind her knee, then trailed his fingers up to between her legs to find her warm and wet. He dipped a pair of fingers within her and pressed his thumb against her clit. She sighed, and he caught the sweet sound with his mouth. Her body tightened around his hand, and he stared into brown eyes dark with love and desire. Still moving his fingers inside her, keeping up the circular pressure with his thumb, he shifted so her thighs cradled his hips.
Freeing his hand, he pushed forward, burying his body in hers. She threw her head back on a slow moan, and he rested on his elbows, cupping her face in his hands. He set a slow, steady rhythm for them, sliding almost out before pressing home again. Legs wrapped around his thighs, she lifted her hips to meet each easy thrust. He caressed the corner of her mouth with his thumb and let himself enjoy the slow build of tension at the base of his spine, the smooth wet glide in and out of her.
“Listen to me.” He tangled his hand in her hair so her gaze remained on his. “You will always be what I want. Always.”
She shuddered in his arms, head falling back as much as his hold would allow. Around him, her muscles fluttered and clenched, growing into a sharp squeezing that corresponded to her moan of anguished pleasure. He clenched his teeth, hips moving faster and harder, but no less controlled. The tension spread to his balls, tightening every muscle until the pressure exploded into an orgasm that pulled a yell from his lips.
He collapsed onto his elbows, keeping his full weight off of her. Amy raised a languid hand to stroke through his hair and down his neck. He pressed a kiss to her throat.
“You will always be what I want.” He repeated the promise against her damp skin, their bodies still joined. “Always.”
*
“Tell me again what you’re doing?” Troy Lee slumped in the chair next to Rob’s desk. Well, not his officially yet, but the one he preferred to commandeer. “And why you’re here on your day off, when you should be decompressing.”
“Amy went shopping with her mom, I mowed the grass, and now I am…” Rob looked at the driver’s license number he’d jotted down again to make sure he had it right this time. His concentration was seriously off this afternoon. “Running Zeke and Brittany Jenkins through the system one more time, looking to see if there’s anything I missed. You know, known associates, anything that might give us an idea what avenue to pursue next. And I’m here because we’re still in the first forty-eight-hour period on Zeke Jenkins, and I need to make sure this gets done. Why are you here?”
“Covered half of Monroe’s shift.” Troy Lee eyed the folders and papers spread across the desk. “You realize how completely boring this is, right?”
“No less boring than watching yet another woman try to flirt her way out of a ticket with you.” Rob shoved a folder across the desk at him. “Read through those and see if I missed anything.”
“What are these… Hell, who sends that many text messages in a month?”
“Lots of people.” He frowned at the computer screen. “Chris cited Zeke and Mike Smithwick for underage consumption a year or so ago.”
“Pasture parties.” Troy Lee flipped to another page. “Kids have them around here all the time.”
“But that’s…” Rob rifled through his notebook. “The day Emma was born.”
“Maybe they were celebrating.”
“Maybe. You and Chris go celebrating together when your kids were born?”
“Yeah, right.” Troy Lee glanced up. “But I’m ten years older than Zeke was. Eighteen-year-old kids are stupid. Having a couple of beers with a buddy might have seemed completely natural.”
“Amy would have my ass,” Rob muttered. She’d had a birth plan, a post-birth plan and a coming-home plan, before they’d realized they’d never need any of it—and that post-birth plan had not involved his celebrating with a beer and his buddies.
“Amy already has your ass.” Troy Lee groaned and flipped another page. “Even their phone records are boring.”
“So is your whining.” He scrolled down and clicked to bring up the details of the citation. Across the desk, his phone buzzed and vibrated. He flicked a finger at it. “Check that, would you? Vaughn over at the crime lab was supposed to text me if they had anything.”
Troy Lee reached for the cell. Rob frowned at the report and grabbed his bottle of water. No pasture party, only Zeke and Mike. “Where’s Lime Pit Road? And was that from Vaughn?”
“No, Amy. Her vote is to keep the beach condo, but she wants to repaint. Sent some colors. I like the muted teal.” Troy Lee slid the phone across the desk at him. “Oh, yeah, and she wants you to fuck her out on the balcony.”
He choked on the sip of water he’d taken. “What?”
“Look for yourself.” Troy Lee pointed at the phone. “And Lime Pit Road is an old dirt road off of 112 in the eastern side of the county. It’s a few miles north of Zeke and Britt’s place.”
Sure enough, the first message was Amy in full planning mode. Keep the condo, paint and update, here were some colors. The second? A photo of a plush lounge chair for the balcony and a note that it was perfect for the nights she wanted him to fuck her from behind while listening to the waves and the gulls. He shifted in the chair. Heaven help him. He didn’t care what the damn chair cost—they were buying one.
“Well, well.” He didn’t even have to look at Troy Lee to know his partner was grinning. “Got back in her bed big-time, didn’t you?”
“Shut up, Troy Lee.” Face burning, he laid the phone down with a mental note not to ask Troy Lee to check his texts again. In his defense, it had been a long while since he’d gotten one of those texts from his wife. “And it’s our bed.”
“You’re blushing.” Troy Lee reached out to flick him on the ear, and Rob knocked his hand away. Troy Lee’s rich laugh rumbled between them. “Imagine if someone had to pull your phone records.”
“They would find my lovely wife likes to get my motor running by sending me very naughty texts.” Rob turned his attention back to the computer.
“I’m a little jealous, Bennett. The extent of my wife texting me is usually a grocery list to pick up on the way home from my shift.” Troy Lee reached for the folder once more. “But I’m definitely going to suggest she expand her repertoire.”
“Let me know how that works out.” He closed out the report and navigated to the home screen. Leaning back in his chair, he tossed his pen on the desk. “I got nothing.”
“Which is why investigations is boring. It’s usually days and days of nothing.”
“No, usually you have something. Having nothing here is not good.” Rob chafed a hand over his nape. “Most missing persons turn up on their own within a couple of weeks, like Brittany. The others are usually dead within the first twenty-four to forty-eight hours. Zeke has no reason to leave. The marriage isn’t good, but by all accounts, he’s a good dad and he loves that kid. His relationship with his parents is good, he has friends… I just don’t think he took off. We don’t have an inkling what happened or where to look, and that’s not good for him because time is ticking.”
“You know what’s weird?” A slight frown wrinkling his brow, Troy Lee flipped through the next couple of pages. “He texts Britt, he texts his mom, he texts Blake Calvert and his other buddies. He doesn’t text Mike Smithwick.”
“Really?” Rob paused with his water bottle halfway to his lips again. “That is weird.”
“Maybe Smithwick isn’t techy.” Troy Lee shrugged. “My younger sister doesn’t text
. Makes Montgomery nuts.”
“Maybe.” He opened an email tab and typed in Vaughn’s email address. This late in the day, he doubted he’d get a reply, but it made him feel like he was doing something, at least. He tapped out a request for the lab to send him a list of the apps on Zeke’s phone.
“The river’s four feet over flood stage.” Troy Lee gestured toward the television in the corner. “And rising.”
Rob sent the email and glanced at the meteorologist. They’d spent part of their shift yesterday checking roads near the river for localized flooding. In lowlying areas, the river and its tributaries were already spilling out of their beds and creeping across the surrounding land. “Hope that dam holds.”
“Or that they don’t have to breach it. Either way, we’ll be pulling doubles.” Troy Lee stretched. “Are you about done here?”
“I’m going to start asking you that every time you pull over to run radar, but yeah, I’ve done about all I can do.”
“Great. Let’s call it 10-6 and go home. My shift ended a half hour ago, and you need to spend some time with your wife.”
Chapter Nine
Amy dropped her shopping bags on the floor, set the pizza box on the island and went in search of her husband. She found him in front of his laptop in their office, elbow on the desk, chin in hand. “Sorry I’m late.”
“Hey.” He slanted a smile at her. “So was I.”
“I brought us a pizza.” She crossed to kiss him. Her gaze fell on the multicolored columns on the screen, and she cringed. “Oh God. The budget spreadsheet.”
“No worries. I’m not asking you to look at it tonight. I’m only paying the light bill and updating everything.”
She toyed with the edges of his hair, damp from a shower. On a sharp swallow that hurt her throat, she launched into the subject that had haunted her all day. “Rob? Do you want me to call the agency Monday and withdraw our application? I mean, we’re on hold and everything, but if you’re not sure, maybe we should pull it.”
“What? No.” He spun the chair and drew her to stand between his denim-clad thighs. He settled warm hands at her hips. “Amy, I never said I didn’t want kids. I said maybe we jumped into the adoption process at the wrong time for us.”
She ran her fingers through the hair at his temple. “So you do want us to have kids someday, right?”
“Yes.” He gazed up at her, his expression earnest. “But if I’m still figuring out what it means to really be your husband, how can I be ready to be someone’s dad? I don’t want to mess that up.”
“You are going to be a great dad. You’d never mess that up.”
His brows dipped into a small frown. His throat flexed with a swallow. “Why were we trying in the first place?”
“What kind of question is that?” Irritation pulsed to life under her skin. She hated those searching questions, this whole why-do-we-want-this process. She lifted a hand and let it fall against her hip. “Because…”
She cast about for the right words. She would not squirm under that calm, collected, knowing gaze of his.
“Because it was scheduled into the plan, right?” His voice was gentle. “Eighteen-month engagement while we finish college and you plan the wedding of your dreams, wait two years to start trying, have a baby before our third anniversary.”
“You make it sound so cold and calculating, and it’s not. My setting goals and having a plan isn’t that far off from your precious budget spreadsheet.”
“You’re right. It’s not.” He exerted tender pressure to pull her toward him, and his head fell back, their eyes meshed. “But we’re different people than we were five years ago. Maybe it’s time for a different plan.”
“Let me guess.” She rested her finger at the spot where his dimple bloomed when he smiled. Her irritation faded. Yes, she hated the introspection because it required her to look at her own motives, but truly, having a husband who wanted to strengthen their marriage was pretty damn irresistible. “What do we want and why do we want it?”
The dimple appeared beneath her fingertip. “Exactly.”
She let her hands fall to his shoulders, the fine cotton of his shirt smooth under her palms, and leaned forward, her mouth close to his. “I really want that lounge chair. Because I really want you to—”
“God bless America, you cannot text me like that when I’m trying to work.” His shoulders shook with laughter. “And honey, I already ordered you that chair.”
“Wonderful.” She settled on his lap and wound her arms around his neck. “So what do we want, other than really hot sex on the balcony at the beach condo?”
“That’s a great question.” He swept her hair away from her neck and drew a caress down the line of her throat. “I want to spend my life with you. All the ordinary days, but the for worse times too. I don’t want us to do those alone.”
Like he’d felt he had to the last few months. She struggled against the smothering guilt. She couldn’t change that. All she could do was make sure she didn’t let him slip away into isolation again.
He fiddled with the collar of her shirt. “I’d like you to get your master’s degree if you want.”
She smiled at that. He’d finished his graduate degree during their first year of marriage. “Grad school is a great idea, but that’s later. I want to travel with you. And I want us to be a family.”
“I want that too. Only when we’re sorted out and stronger.” He trailed a finger down to where the edges of her blouse met above the line of her cleavage. She sizzled under the simple touch. Oh, she loved having this attention from him once more. “What if we revisit it in six months? See where we are then?”
“We can do that.” She slipped her phone from her pocket and opened her calendar app.
“You’re putting it in your phone?” His laughter rumbled through her.
“Yes, I’m putting it in my phone.” She dug her elbow into his ribs and wiggled her butt into him, relishing his groan. “Come on, let’s eat before that pizza gets any colder.”
“Let it get cold. I missed you today.” His voice hoarsened, a raw note that spoke of his hunger for her, and he tangled his fingers in her loose knot. “Let me take you in the bedroom, and we’ll practice for that balcony.”
“I have a better idea.” She laid her phone on the desk and busied herself unbuttoning his shirt. Heavy excitement bloomed, an ache spreading between her thighs. She separated the soft cotton and raked gentle fingers over his chest and abs.
“Oh? What’s that?” Smiling, he pulled her blouse free of her waistband and laid warm fingers on her skin.
“We haven’t christened this room.” She tugged his unbuttoned shirt from his jeans and ran her palms over his shoulders, pushing the smooth cotton down until it caught on his triceps.
“Are we christening every room?” His thumb took up a maddening slow rhythm at her waist.
“We are.” She rose to stand between his thighs and unbuttoned her gauzy blouse. She shrugged out of it while he reached to unfasten her slacks. She slid them over her hips, let them fall to the floor and kicked them aside. “Don’t you remember how much fun that was when we moved into our place in Valdosta?”
He fought free of his own shirt. “Maybe you should remind me.”
“So you don’t remember what we did in our office there?” She explored the bare expanse of his chest and abdomen, loving how his muscles contracted and quivered under the gentlest of touches. At his waistband, she paused and curled her fingers around the rough fabric. She knelt between his thighs, his jeans a delicious rasp on her bare skin.
“Which time?” His dimple flashed. She undid the fastener on his jeans and lowered his zipper before edging the fabric down just enough to free him. He was hard, veins showing under silky skin. Looking at him, imagining him thrusting inside her, made her feel swollen—wet and open. With a fingertip, she circled the head, and he hissed in a sharp breath.
“Let’s see if I can jog your memory.” Kneeling, she took him into her
mouth and earned yet another harsh inhale. Slowly, she reacquainted herself with the taste and feel of him, the warm skin over hard flesh, the way he tightened and hardened even further against her tongue. He tasted of salt and soap and male. His shaking fingers danced through her hair, scattering pins until it fell loose about her shoulders. He buried his hands in it, his hips moving in easy thrusts into her mouth. She rasped gentle fingernails across his abs and brushed a kiss across the head of his erection. “Is it coming back to you yet?”
“You skipped a part.” Eyes burning with passion, he gazed down her, his fingers massaging her scalp. “The way I remember it, you did that after you walked up behind me and bit me.”
“Oh, that’s right.” She rose and walked around him, trailing her fingers across his chest. She tilted his head back to afford her greater access to the corded muscles in his neck. “Like this.”
Hand on his chest, she sank a soft bite into his skin. On a groan, he reached an arm up to cup her head with one hand. He flexed the other hand back to skim up her thigh and stroke her through satin panties. At the first electric touch, her knees threatened to buckle, and he laughed. In retaliation, she bit him again, harder, suckling at the tender spot. He rubbed at the thin, damp fabric covering her and circled his fingers around her clit. He tugged and moved the fabric, a slow abrading that made her wild. Heaviness bloomed low in her belly.
“You were just this wet that night.”
“You always make me wet.” She whispered the words against his skin. His fingers slipped under the edge of her panties to delve into her, his thumb continuing to slide over her satin-covered clit. She tightened her arm around his shoulders. “Take me against the wall.”
His dark chuckle vibrated through her, and he slowly pumped his fingers in and out of her. “I think you have your memories mixed up. That was another night.”
“We’re making a new memory.” She closed her eyes and bit back a moan as his thumb pressed harder against her.
“I like that idea. We need lots of those.” He rose and turned to gather her in his arms, lifted against him chest to chest. She wrapped her legs about his waist and nipped at his throat. This strength and security she cherished, as she adored being completely loved by this man. Two long strides and he braced her against the wall, her legs draped over his thighs. He shoved her panties aside and positioned himself at her opening. Twining their fingers together, he pressed her arms against the wall on either side of her head and pushed home. She cried out.
Gone From Me: Hearts of the South, Book 10 Page 15